


Words on a Page

by eponine119



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, UST, the 70s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23602462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119
Summary: The dossier didn't capture the real man
Relationships: Juliet Burke/James "Sawyer" Ford
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	Words on a Page

Words on a Page  
by eponine119  
March 28 – April 1, 2020 

They're taking a water break in the jungle when he pulls out the ultimate non-sequiter. 

“You really had files on all of us?” 

“Didn't you keep files on your marks?” she asks, with the coolness of water. She wonders how long he's been thinking about this. When he realized. Why he decided now was the time to bring it up. 

“Point taken,” he says, irritated. He gets a crease across his nose when he glares. “What did mine say?” 

“I didn't memorize them, James.” 

He gives her a knowing look. “What did mine say,” he repeats. He's not asking. It's an order.

She takes a deep breath and looks away. In the face of his anger, she recites in her calmest voice, her Others voice. “Your name. Your aliases. Your height, your weight, your birthday. The things that happened to you --” 

His eyes flash at her, green as the jungle. “You knew about him. The man I killed in Sydney. Nobody knew about him.” 

“Somebody must have.” 

“The police? So if I ever got off this rock, I was going back to prison?” 

“Is that why you jumped off the helicopter? You thought you would end up being sent to prison?” 

For some reason she doesn't understand, he's honest with her. “I jumped off the chopper because it was going down. Fuel tank was leakin'. We threw out everything that wasn't nailed down, and then the pilot goes, sure wish we were two hundred pounds lighter. And I could _feel_ Hurley hatin' himself in that moment. A man like that...” He shakes his head. “Then there's Doctor Hero, and Kate don't weigh more than a buck twenty and she's got Aaron. Only one man on that chopper who didn't deserve to live. So I jumped.”

“You deserve --” 

He doesn't let her finish. “Ain't you lucky I did.” His smile at her is nasty. 

She resists the urge to return it.

“Did you have information about her?” He's still breathing hard, and fast, and she knows his heart is racing. Agitated. 

“Kate?” 

“No.” He gives her that intense look. “My kid.” 

She nods. She's going to make him ask. 

But he doesn't. He looks away. He studies the trees, and his boots. “Been thinkin' about her lately.” He stops himself from saying more. 

Juliet nods very seriously. He looks at her, eyes wild. He's not going to ask. He's afraid, and she knows it. 

“There was information,” she confirms. 

“Maybe someday you can tell me.” He looks away, almost centering himself. He takes a couple of deep breaths. Then he looks at her, himself again, pretending everything is fine and shooting her a devilish grin. “What was in your file?” 

“What do you want to know?” 

“Why you're standin' here with a man who's lied, cheated, stole and killed when you could be with anyone else in the world.” 

She feels such sadness for him. “That wouldn't have been in the file.” 

He looks at her like she's wrong. Like he could have taken all the puzzle pieces and fit them together to understand. When she's not even sure herself. 

“Maybe I like you. Being with you.” She says it plainly, openly. 

She waits for him to make a crack about it. But he doesn't. He absorbs it. Maybe even believes it. 

“I don't think I even know your last name,” he says. 

“You might not even know my first name,” she replies, and it takes him a moment to realize she's teasing him. Then she holds out her hand, as though to shake. “Juliet Burke.” 

“James Ford,” he replies. His rough, dry, warm hand slides over hers and gives it a squeeze. “But I go by Sawyer. Or, hell, here I go by Jim LaFleur.” 

He doesn't release her hand. He keeps looking in her eyes, and she doesn't look away. Neither does he. His thumb starts to stroke the side of her hand. Her breath becomes shallow. 

That's when Miles comes crashing through the jungle and they jump apart. “What's going on here?” he asks, amusement dancing in his eyes. 

“Nothing,” James growls. “What's going on with you?” 

“I think I found something.” 

“What?” 

“Paw prints.” 

“Show me,” James commands, and they all troop off after Miles, who crouches and pushes back some branches, pointing. James kneels down, shallowly runs his fingers over the marks in the mud. Then he looks up at her for her opinion. 

“It's not Vincent,” she says, certain. 

“Why the hell ain't it Vincent?” James demands. 

“It's too big. Looks more like a cat. Jaguar, panther, something like that.” 

“You got jaguars runnin' around these woods?” 

“What isn't running around in these woods,” Miles remarks, rolling his eyes.

“Not anymore,” Juliet answers James's question. 

“Guys, if that's a jaguar, I think we need to get back inside,” Miles says. They both ignore him. 

“You're sure it's not Vincent?” James demands of her. She can see how badly he wants to believe it. 

“I'm sure,” she says. 

“Hey. You two. Let's get back to civilization before we get eaten by a freakin' jaguar,” Miles says. 

James gives Miles a sidelong look, then checks in with Juliet. She half-smiles, half shrugs. Then they head back to the barracks, search over for the day. 

…

After dinner, after dark, she goes to sit on the swingset, to think. The air indoors feels stifling. She leans her head against the chains and drags her feet through the dirt. 

“Penny for 'em.” James appears in front of her. He must have sought her out, and for some reason, that doesn't surprise her anymore. 

She raises her head, or tries to. The chains of the swing have ensnared her hair, just the way they used to when she was little. She raises a hand to try to free herself without ripping the strands out of her head, but she can't see what she's doing. 

James brushes her hand away and ever so gently untangles her from the rusty chains. The lightness of his touch makes her heart do a weird skipping thing in her chest. “Thanks,” she says. 

“Don't mention it.” He sinks down into the swing next to hers with a sigh. “You ain't afraid of a little jungle cat gettin' you out here?” 

“I'm not afraid of you, James,” she says, and has to smile a little bit. 

“Hardy har har,” he replies. 

“Why did you come out here?” she asks. She knows he wants something, but doesn't know what. 

“Maybe I saw you sittin' here all lonely-like and thought you needed some company.” He gives her a predatory smile. 

She gives him a look that says yeah, right. 

“I want to know more,” he replies, giving it to her straight. 

“About me, or about you?” She already knows the answer. But she's intrigued enough to humor him. 

“Did this file of yours say anything about the man who ki --” He stops himself. The con man didn't kill his parents, not directly. He's just thought of it that way for the last thirty years. She's intrigued that he's trying to change. “The man who took my daddy for everything he had?” 

“What do you want to know, James?” she asked. 

“What was his name?” He looks desperate. Vulnerable. And she wants to know why. 

She doesn't remember. She told him she didn't memorize them, and that was the truth. Her focus was on Jack, though Ben gave her the files of all the survivors living on the beach at the time he sent her to spy on them, and she did read them all, skimming a few. She tries to call up the image in her mind now, to try to read it in her memory. But it isn't there. “I'm sorry, I don't --” She doesn't want to do this to him. 

“Was it Anthony Cooper?” The hope in his voice is strange. 

It sounds familiar. “I think so,” she says. 

“You think? You're not sure?” 

“James, what's this all about?” 

“I killed him,” he says. She opens her mouth to interrupt, but he cuts her off. “I just... need to know it was the right guy.” 

“Unlike in Sydney,” she points out. Running the timeline in her head. He killed a man in Sydney right before he got on the plane, but that wasn't the right man. Where and when did he have time to find and kill this Cooper? Or was that before? 

He just glares at her. 

She supposes she deserves it. “Do you want to tell me about it?” 

“No.” 

She nods, and starts to get up from the swing. Figuring he's gotten what he wanted from her and the conversation is over. 

“Hey.” He catches her wrist. His skin is hot in the cool night air. For a moment she flashes on what it must be like to sleep next to him, wrapped in the inferno of his arms. Her heart is racing again. She pauses, and he moves his head in an irritated way. “You gonna tell me about the people you've killed? A little tit for tat?” 

She sits heavily back in the swing, feeling like she's been doused with cold water. 

“Fair's fair,” he snarls. 

“I lost nine women in childbirth on this island. And their babies.” 

“Patients ain't --” 

She just keeps talking, right over him. To make her point. “Every single one of them was depending on me to save her life. Every single one of them got pregnant in the first place, knowing it would kill her, because she trusted me when I said I could save her. And every. Single. One. Died. In agony. So yes, James, there is blood on my hands, and yes, I killed them, and I will burn in hell some day because of it.” 

“You don't believe in hell,” he says. 

“You don't know anything about me.” 

“Ain't that the point of this little conversation? To get to know each other better?” He's turned her hand over in his, palm up, and he's tracing light little figures on it. His touch is as soft as a breath. 

“You want to bond over the people we've murdered,” she says. And he looks at her, the way he used to look at Kate when she told him he was disgusting. When she looked down her nose at him because she didn't want to admit they were the same. Kate wanted to be better than him. Juliet knows she isn't. “Then give me something else.” 

“Something else what?” he snaps. 

“To talk about,” she says simply. 

“This hittin' a little too close to home?” 

“You want to tell me about Cooper?” 

Anger is written all over his face. He folds up her hand and lets it drop. A clear no. 

“Then give me something else,” she says. 

“Wanna make out?” 

“There's nothing you want to know about me?” She's getting angry now, and forces it down, beneath her practiced calm. Later she'll have to think about why she's angry that he came out here just to question her about himself. Why it makes her angry to think he doesn't want to know her better. 

“What's your favorite flower?” He throws the question out there, putting his hands up in defeat. 

“That's what you ask?” 

“Never hurts to know a lady's favorite flower in case you got some apologizing to do.” He gives her that charming look, the one that helps her understand why he was able to con so many women. 

“Sunflowers.” 

“All righty then,” he says. 

“What's yours?” she asks. 

“My what?” 

“Your favorite flower,” she specifies, and he looks at her like she's crazy. “You never know. I might need to apologize one day.”

“Give me the classics, and somethin' that smells good.” 

“I don't think anyone's ever given me flowers,” she says. 

“Now why do I find that hard to believe?” His tone is still amused, but his eyes are serious as he studies her. 

“I'm serious,” she says. “My husband was never one to apologize for anything. Or remember Valentine's Day.” Though she remembers one year his secretary had a big vase full of flowers. She should have recognized the signs. 

“Husband.” 

Finally she's surprised him. As though her being married would put a stop to anything that might happen here, between them. “Divorced. Then he died,” she says simply. “I think Richard Alpert killed him, actually.” 

“He was here?” He cocks his head, confused. 

“No,” she says. “It was in Miami.” 

“I hate Florida,” he sighs. She knows she's supposed to ask. She doesn't say anything. “C'mon, you can't just put that out there and not tell me the whole thing.” 

She half-smiles at him. “They were recruiting me to come here. Three years ago. Richard, and Ben, I suppose. I was still working with Ed – my husband. Ex-husband. I'd just made a breakthrough in my research, and he had dollar signs in his eyes. He would never let me go. I said as much, to Richard. The only way he'd let me go is if he got hit by a bus. I didn't mean it. And then he did.” 

“Did what?” 

“He got hit by a bus. Right in front of me. And Richard swore on his eyeliner it was just a terrible accident. But nothing here happens by accident.” She looks at him, deliberately. “Another man I killed.” 

“Yeah, you're a real assassin,” he says, sarcastic. He must see something in the look on her face, because he backtracks with, “I'm sorry.” 

“I'm not. He was an asshole.” She puts her head down, stretching her neck. “I'm so tired, James.” 

“Hell, why didn't you say so? We can go to bed.” He stops. Realizes what he just said. “I mean --” 

“I know what you mean,” she says. “Not that kind of tired. I wish – I could start over.” 

“You can start over here.” 

“It's still the island.” She takes a deep breath. “I'm going to hate myself in the morning.” 

“What for?” 

“Because I told you all of this,” she says honestly, and looks him in the eye. She knows that's something he understands. “Goodnight, James.” This time he lets her go. 

…

She thinks about Ben when she's lying awake that night, turning her conversation with James over and over in her mind. 

Ben had a file on her. The things he said made it obvious, even if he never referred to it. He didn't care that she knew. 

She remembers trying to like him. How she did like him, kind of, in the beginning. He was likeable enough – smart, sarcastically funny. 

But off. 

Just slightly... off. 

Because he thought he knew her. And then he thought he loved her, and it made him do terrible things.

She doesn't think she knows James just because she read a bunch of words on paper about him. And she's done with love on this island, requited or otherwise. 

Even as she lies there, trying to figure out how to make James like her as a person.

Except she already knows he likes her. She promised him the one thing he's never had in his entire life – someone to watch out for him. She sees it in the way he looks at her. He seeks her out. He reaches for her, touches her, without even a second thought. 

Like when he came back through a rainstorm of flaming arrows to get her. 

Like him holding her hand on the swingset tonight. 

She tased him and helped keep him prisoner in a polar bear cage, and tonight he was holding her hand and asking her about flowers. 

She doesn't want James to think of her the way she thinks about Ben, but she doesn't know how it isn't too late already.

It hurts too much to think about, so she sighs and rolls over in bed, knowing she won't sleep. 

…

They linger over breakfast, until they're practically the only ones still in the cafeteria. James brings her another refill of coffee and sits across the table from her. 

“Why'd you become a doctor?” he asks her. 

“The usual reasons.” 

He just looks at her, making it clear he doesn't consider this an answer. 

She gives him the standard line. “I wanted to help people. And I was smart enough, and driven enough.” 

“Humble, too,” he teases.

She opens her mouth to protest. 

“I already noticed you're smart,” he says, like he's proud that he noticed. And she can't help smiling. It makes her feel like someone's inflated a balloon inside her chest, light and like there's no room to breathe. 

“Did you ever --” She stops, because it's already coming out wrong. She doesn't want to hurt him with her question. “What did you want to be, when you grew up?” 

“Before I turned myself into the man who ruined my life?” He says it with an unbearable lightness in his tone and darkness in his eyes. 

“We all ruin our own lives, James,” she says. 

“Ain't you just a ray of sunshine and hopefulness today.” 

“I didn't get any sleep,” she grumbles. 

“Five cups of coffee gave away your secret, sweetheart. But who's counting.” 

He was, apparently. She wasn't. 

“For five or ten minutes I thought about bein' a cop,” he says, answering her question about what he wanted to be. He must be serious, because he immediately undercuts it with, “Too many Hardy Boys books.” 

“I never read any.” 

“That's why you became a doctor.” He grins. 

“Nancy Drew, though,” she offers. “A few.” 

“All the same tricks as the Hardy Boys,” he says, and her vision of him shifts. She had been picturing a little boy with white blond hair and big stack of blue-covered books. Now she sees an older boy, reading whatever he can get his hands on in a foster home. She's so absorbed in her vision that she almost doesn't notice the look in his eyes, like he's begging her not to make fun of him. 

“So you've always been a reader,” she says. 

He shrugs those shoulders of his. 

“Did they do summer reading at the library where you grew up? They must have, they had it everyplace we lived,” she says. “One summer I quit summer reading because I was embarrassed by how many books I read.” 

“You moved around a lot?” His eyebrows rise with sparked interest.

“My dad was always looking for the next big thing.” It's the easiest way she has to explain it. 

He looks like he's assembling a picture of her in his head. She wonders if it's right. He's perceptive, and yes, smart. 

“How did you become a reader?” she asks. 

“Had some time to kill,” he says. But then he relents. She knows he thinks he'll get something by sharing the story, otherwise he wouldn't. “I had mono, when I was a kid. Too sick to do anything, not sick enough not to be bored watchin' TV all hours. Got hooked on _Little House_ , never missed it. So my aunt brings me the books. Box set. Nicest present I ever got, not even my birthday. Girls' books.” He glances at her, checking in on her reaction. She keeps her face neutral, because she wants more. “Read 'em til they fell apart.” He takes a long, slow, deep breath. “Anyway, I read whatever was around after that.” 

There's so many things she wants to ask him she doesn't know where to start. Especially when she knows that with one wrong move, he'll bolt like a baby bunny, and she won't see this side of the man again. 

“I know why you read,” he says, looking at her slyly. 

“Why's that?” she asks, interested to hear his theory about her. 

“You're a nerd.” He grins like he's delighted with himself. 

“You got me,” she says. Playing along. Thinking about sitting inside on a summer day, in six different bedrooms in six different towns, her nose in a book. She read for the same reasons he did – pure loneliness. 

She thinks they still have that in common. 

Maybe he sees something of it in her face because he reaches for her coffee mug. “Number six, coming right up.” 

“Don't,” she says, pulling it back. It's a little too rough so she adds, “So much for sleeping tonight.” 

“I know a good way to fall asleep,” he says seductively.

“The last four you brought me were decaf and you thought I wouldn't notice,” she says. 

“You wanna pull an all-nighter, I'll keep you company,” he offers. 

“You're shameless. You'd flirt with a lamppost.” 

“If it were cute enough, reckon I would.” 

“You don't think I'm cute, James.” 

She's gratified that he looks at her like she's crazy. “I got eyes, woman.” 

“I'm not your type.” 

“You know that from readin' my file?” 

There it is. What they've both been trying to forget. Bringing them up short. 

He sighs audibly. “I feel like you know all my secrets.” 

“All I know are words on a page,” she says. 

He looks her hard in the eyes for a long, long moment. Then he leans in close over the table. His lips are inches from hers. “You're exactly my type. Strong, smart. Good girl gone bad.” 

“I'm not a good girl, James.” 

“Liars are also my type, Juliet.” It sounds like a threat. 

She thinks, if this were a movie, this would be where he would kiss her.

Instead he just walks away. 

She doesn't know why she's disappointed. 

(end)


End file.
